Not Quite Hatred
by Ramzes
Summary: Looking back years later, he could see clearly that it was that night that had first made him start paying attention to Astoria Greengrass.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Do I need one

**Disclaimer: Do I need one? Of ****course I don't own anything!**

Chapter 1

"I am ashamed to be a Slytherin."

The words were spoken firmly and plainly. The stupid girl – whoever she was – had not even bothered to lower her voice! Draco Malfoy entered the common room and realized that there were only two occupants, next to the fireplace. One of them was his classmate, Daphne Greengrass, and the other one was a younger dark-haired girl, who he had seen quite often with Daphne, but had never bothered to say 'hello' to. He snorted – they were living in very dangerous times and he had thought that Daphne, of all people, would be smart enough to keep a low profile, even if she did not like the way things were at Hogwarts now. He did not like it either, but no one had seen him listening to such traitorous words. For all he knew, that idiotic girl could blurt out that she was ashamed to be a pureblood without turning a hair! And Daphne was here, and her silence showed an unspoken agreement. Stupid girls! Stupid, stupid, stupid!

"What were you saying?" he asked nonchalantly, trying to make her feel uncomfortable.

"I was just saying that I am ashamed to be a Slytherin," the girl repeated calmly.

His jaw almost dropped, as he officially put her on the list of people with mental disorders. "Why?" was the only thing he could say, shocked.

"The Carrows put Parvati Patil under the Cruciatus Curse for refusing to use it on her sister," Daphne explained quietly.

Draco blinked. "And what of that?"

"Obviously nothing for you" the girl whose identity he still did not know said. "Just for your information, I think that you and your bodyguards truly deserve each other!"

Again, he blinked. "Crabbe and Goyle?"

"Crabbe was the one who volunteered to torture Patil," Daphne intervened again.

Torturing her. Draco felt his throat going dry, when he thought of all the tortures that he had recently witnessed. Yet he drawled, ironically, "I did not know that the Patil girls meant so much to you."

"They don't," Daphne said. "But it is not about my liking, it is about – it isn't right, Malfoy. It just isn't – "

"Shut up!" he hissed, seizing her hand and shaking it furiously, while looking frantically around. "Do you want someone to hear you? Do you know what's going to happen to you, you stupid little cows? They will punish all of us and I suppose that the Cruciatus will be the least we can expect!"

"Leave me! It hurts!"

"It will hurt even more when they lay their hands on you! For Merlin's sake, couldn't you find a better moment to start caring for blood-traitors?"

He did not want the punishments and terror that reigned over the rest of Hogwarts to enter the Slytherin dungeons, no matter how stupid those two fools could get.

Daphne tried to yank her hand off, but he was squeezing it too tightly.

"Release me!"

The unknown girl grabbed his hand. "Leave her!" she yelled and pulled as strongly as she could. That was not saying much, because she was too short – at least a head shorter than he was – and her fingers were weak and fragile; but the act itself surprised him so much that he instinctively obeyed, feeling like he was reliving again something that had happened in the past. He could not figure out what it was, though.

"Be careful with what you say," he warned both of them. Daphne nodded silently and the other girl looked at him with something like disdain.

"Worried about your skin, Malfoy?" she asked. "Don't worry, you can just rat us out and become even more trustworthy in our new _teachers'_ eyes."

Her eyes were icy and full of contempt. Again, he felt like he had experienced something like this before… but the memory escaped him. She turned her back at him. "See you later, Daphne," she said and headed for the girls' dormitories.

"Who is she?" Draco asked, looking at Daphne.

"My sister. Astoria."

He looked at his classmate for seven years, surprised. "I didn't know you had a sister."

Daphne shrugged. "You never asked."

_That's true_. He suddenly realized how little he knew about Daphne, although the two of them got along with each other quite fine, when they were in the same room. Actually, he didn't know much about any of his classmates, except for Crabbe and Goyle, but then, what was there to know about those two? Their food preferences? _Well, that is easy: they like everything, and lots of it._

He was surprised by Daphne, though. She had been a member of Dolores Umbridge's Unit, so how the hell had she ended up feeling sorry for the Patils? At the moment when that pity could cost her her health no less! He had thought that she was a smart girl. How wrong he had been.

Her sister was even a bigger surprise. He looked at the girl's retreating back, the thick dark hair and the green robe. Astoria Greengrass left the impression that she hated him. _That's great_, he thought_, I spent only a few minutes with her, but in these two minutes she learned to hate me._ It was not that he was concerned about her hating him, but it was unusual. Every girl in Slytherin was enraptured with him or at least trying to look this way, no doubt envisioning herself as the future Mrs Malfoy, a mistress of a huge Manor and an owner of a tidy fortune – what the hell was wrong with Astoria Greengrass?

She was different. Not better than the other girls from Slytherin, far from it. In fact, she was far worse. She was rude, un-girly and stupid – so stupid that it could lead her to her death.

Still, it did not change the fact that she _was_ different.

The girl was already disappearing from his sight, when the memory that had kept escaping him suddenly came back. The Mudblood, of course, Hermione Granger, when she had been retaliating for his taunts, when she had hit him for insulting that oaf Hagrid, Hermione Granger, who had looked at him with the same disdain as Astoria Greengrass each time when they had been close to one another.

He did not rat them out, although he himself did not know why. Maybe because he had seen too much torture for the last two years. He certainly did not need more of it.

Looking back years later, he could see that it was that night that had first made him start paying attention to Astoria Greengrass. Not like her, but start pay attention to her anyway. At least, he soon found out that he always noticed it when she was in the same room with him. It was hard not to, given the fact that any moment, the stupid girl could say something that would bring the punishments that he and his fellow Slytherins had managed to avoid until now, right in their middle.

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**I liked that interview when Rowling said that Slytherins came back to fight and I wanted to describe a decent Slytherin. Did I manage?**

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	2. Chapter 2

Not Quite Hatred 2

_Disclaimer: Mine? Not quite so!_

**I am sorry for this delay. The alternation of writer's blocks and lack of free time is a killer. I hope you can forgive me, though. Thanks for all your kind reviews and if there is someone who hasn't received a personal reply, it's due to my confused mind, for which I am ****truly sorry.**

Chapter 2

_Two months later…_

"_Crucio_!" Astoria cried and the whole class – Slytherin and Ravenclaw fifth years – held their breath with anticipation, looking at the pretty Mariah Haynes, who had just asked their Muggle Studies teacher how it was possible for Muggles to steal magic from wizards, if they were really as thick as Professor Carrow described them.

The girl did not react to the pain of the curse, though. Her expression was surprised and confused, and Alecto Carrow started toward her. "I'll take care about the detention, Miss Greengrass," she said, disapproving of Astoria's failure.

"No, Professor, please, give me another chance!" Astoria said quickly. "_Crucio_!" _Scream, for Merlin's sake,_ she thought, horrified.

Mariah Haynes seemed to have understood what Astoria's intentions were, for he gave a shriek that would make every Banshee proud, and then another one and a third one. Her eyes became glazy, she fell from her chair and her body started shaking in such awful convulsions that all Ravenclaws turned their heads towards Astoria with silent, but no less intent hatred.

Professor Carrow stopped in front of the writhing girl and looked at her, trying to gauge the damages by the eye. "You can make it through the class," she said, "and then you can go to the infirmary. Excellent job, Miss Greengrass," she added. "Ten points to Slytherin."

_Thanks Merlin she's so dense_, Astoria thought. _No other teacher would fall for this trick._

She started looking through her notes, feeling the hateful glares of the Ravenclaws. She was not bothered by them, though. If they saw what they wanted to see, she would let them be. Besides, that made the deception look more authentic.

After the end of the class, when the students started gathering their things, Haynes, supported by two other girls, went past Astoria's desk. For the briefest of moments, their gazes met and the Ravenclaw whispered, "Thank you."

Astoria forced herself to restrain from any kind of reaction.

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_A few hours later…_

Alone in the fifth years girl dormitory in the Slytherin dungeons, Daphne tried to dissuade her sister for one last time. "I'd wish that you don't do it, Astoria…"

"I have already decided it," the younger girl answered, checking again the lid of the vial that she was holding, before tucking it into her robes. "We cannot just leave it like that."

"They won't kill him…" Daphne said, meaning the second-year Hufflepuff, who the Carrows had chained in one of the corridors two hours earlier. "You know that no matter how repulsive they are, they would never kill a student."

Astoria shook her head. "Actually, we _don't_ know that," she said. "All that we know is that they hadn't killed any student _yet_. And anyway, the kid is just a second year. Did you see how utterly terrified he was? And that was even _before_ they tortured him. If we leave it like that, we are no better than them – the Carrows, Malfoy and their whole crowd."

Daphne wanted to argue that Malfoy wasn't so bad, really – he was mere arrogance and idle threats more than anything, but there would be no use of it – Astoria had already decided that he was the devil incarnated.

"So, Daphne, you know what I want you to do?"

"I get you," her sister answered, "but it isn't so easy, I'll let you know – "

"It _is_ very easy," Astoria interrupted. "He's so thick that he won't know what had hit him."

"Yeah, it's easy for _you_ to say it," Daphne muttered. "I agree that he is an idiot, but even he is due to know what a wand pointed at him means."

"You will take care that he won't see it," Astoria said. "Come on, all will be fine."

"Fine? _Fine_?You aren't the one who would be seen with Crabbe, if someone happens to spot us – and Crabbe with a girl, any girl, would be a strange sight – "

"Oh, Daphne, do stop nagging!" Astoria dismissed her sister's objections. "It isn't the moment for being vain!"

Daphne sighed and followed her sister outside the dormitory. They passed the common room and left the Slytherin dungeon, headed for the Great Hall. Then, at one point Astoria hid behind a tapestry in an empty corridor and Daphne continued on her way. Astoria was left to wait in the still corridor – almost no one used that route, since there was a shorter one. She listened for footsteps, checking the vial from time to time.

Finally, she heard the sounds that she had been hoping to catch – two pairs of footsteps and Daphne's voice, chatting with obvious nervousness. _Well, small wonder here, she hates the mission that she is carrying out_. When the footsteps passed past her hiding place, Astoria sneaked out as quietly as possible, pointed her wand at the broad back in front of her and whispered, "_Stupefy_!"

A few minutes later, the unconscious Crabbe was lying on the floor of the broom closet that the two sisters had dragged him in, and the girls were trying to fit in the narrow space that was left unoccupied, while Astoria was stirring a potion with one of his hairs in it. "Merlin, it looks disgusting," she said, looking at it. But she was sure that she had prepared it correctly, so if she drank it, she would hit two targets at the same time: she would free the poor second year without risking her own safety too much – she was a Slytherin, after all, not a brave and noble Gryffindor – and, hopefully, she would land Crabbe in trouble, because she would wear his face during the rescuing. If someone deserved to be subjected to the Carrows' punishment, it was him. Nothing could go wrong…

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_Half an hour later…_

_Everything is going wrong,_ Astoria thought desperately. Oh, the rescuing had gone right according to the plan, that was not the problem! The problem went by the name of Amicus Carrow, who was close on her, having shown up just when she had been finishing releasing the boy…

The problem was also that she had somehow got the potion wrong. She had made it last shorter than it should have and she was changing back into herself.

"_Stop where you are or I will curse you_!"

Carrow was only two corridors behind her. Astoria could do only one thing – she kept on running, although she had to admit that she had never been in the halls and corridors that she was passing through now… She had lost her way, but she couldn't do anything about this. Better never finding her way back than letting Carrow get his hands on her. Astoria was not brave and if there was something that she feared more than anything, it was the Cruciatus Curse. So she kept running, moved by her fear.

Suddenly, a tall figure emerged right in front of her. A pair of hands reached and grabbed her. She almost screamed, but managed to stop herself. Then, she raised her head and looked tight in Draco Malfoy's grey eyes. "What are you doing here?" he asked.

Desperately, she searched her mind for a proper lie, but found none.

"_Just wait until I lay my hands on you!_"

She shook with fear. Malfoy opened his mouth, no doubt to inquire again what was going on, but then rethought and closed it. "Come on!" he hissed and ran, dragging her behind him.

They had made only one turn, when he stopped and opened a door that turned out to be leading to a broom closet. He pushed her inside and threw himself in after her. Then, to her utmost horror, he hugged her and put his chin over her head.

For a moment, Astoria was ready to push him aside, but then she realized what he was trying to do. Students, hiding in broom closets to snog each other senseless, were something pretty common for Hogwarts. If Amicus Carrow found them, there was at least a chance that he would take him for such a couple. She had no idea why Malfoy would want to do that for her – probably, he would regret it as soon as he learned why Carrow had been chasing her, but it would be too late for him to deny his words by then, - but she would take the chance that he was offering her.

Without more thinking, she wound her hands round his neck and pressed her head against his chest. That was how Amicus Carrow found them, when he yanked the door opened and demanded that they go out and admit that they had let the Hufflepuff free. Astoria froze, but Malfoy followed the instructions and went out. He said that they didn't know anything about any student being released, though. For once, Astoria was grateful for his natural arrogance, because she herself could never sound so cold and calm. And then Carrow, no doubt believing the word of a boy known to be a Death Eater, simply growled and went on his way, still chasing his prey.

Astoria looked at Malfoy. He knew that it had been her Carrow was looking for, she was sure. He did not disappoint her. "Are you in this club, DADA?" he asked.

She shook her head. "They wouldn't accept a Slytherin," she said.

"And rightly so," he drawled ironically. "Look at yourself, you are reeking of fear."

Astoria shot him a furious look, but she was a fair person and she knew that he was right. Besides, he had just gotten her out of a BIG trouble. She turned her back at him and marched off, remembering too late that she had no idea where she was.

Malfoy looked after her for a while, before going on his own way. Seeing her so terrified had made him feel some sort of grim pleasure. Unfortunately, he held no illusions that this little episode would dissuade her from further foolish – err, _noble_ – acts. After all, reeking of fear or not, she _had_ gone to rescue the boy.

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**Read? Review!**

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	3. Chapter 3

_Disclaimer: I am not Jo. You can draw the conclusion by yourselves._

**As always, thanks a million for all your lovely reviews. I'm afraid I might have neglected sending the replies, but again, it's due to a horrible combination – my lack of money (which forced me to work overtime, forgetting about checking whether I've sent the replies to the recent review) and the fact that my job is connected to English, English, English (which is not my native language), so when I'm finally done with my daily quota, I am too worn out to write ****ANYTHING is English! The same explanation could be offered as a reason for not updating sooner, but it won't be entirely true – I didn't get the inspiration for writing it the way I wanted. But now, I am here and so is the story.**

Chapter 3

_Three months later…_

"She isn't here."

Draco looked at his classmate, surprised. Her words had nothing to do with the conversation that they had been having moments ago. "Who do you mean?"

"Astoria."

"Oh." He sat back, straightening his aching back, and dismissed her words. He had not been looking for the stupid girl in the almost empty common room – he had been just… looking around.

Meanwhile Daphne had brought her mind back to the textbook in front of her. "I am almost sure that the Imperius Curse is based on the same principle as the Love Potion," she said thoughtfully, and Draco almost gaped at her. Sometimes she said things that could give Loony Lovegood a run for her money!

_Thank Merlin that Loony Lovegood is safe__ now!_ That thought made the muscles in his back constricted, as if his body remembered the punishment of the Dark Lord for their failure. They had had Potter and his gang and they had let them _escape_! The Dark Lord had been furious. For a first time since the beginning of his awful seventh year, Draco had been happy to be at Hogwarts. Cruel and vengeful the Carrows might be, but they could not hold a candle to the Dark Lord's fury. They lacked the brains for it.

As always, he tried not to think about his parents and what might be happening to them in their home, now their prison. It _will never be our home anymore_, he thought bitterly. Even if the Dark Lord decided to move out in this very moment, along with all his cronies, and the Malfoy family spent a year cleaning the Manor, that would not make it Draco's home again. Not without the strongest Memory Charm available.

Sometimes, he was not sure that even such a charm could erase his keen sense of vileness reeking out of the very walls of the building. To completely Vanish Charity Burbage's blood from the floor…

He tried to push these thoughts aside. He looked at Daphne, who had bent over her schoolwork again. He had the feeling that she knew what was going on with him, but she would not speak of it and he was grateful for that.

"Why do you think the working of the two is alike?" he asked.

"They are both forceful and rob people of their will," Daphne explained. "And there is only once centre in the human brain that might be affected in such a way – "

She kept on explaining, and Draco just listened or at least, pretended to listen. It was quite different from the conversations that he had used to have with Crabbe and Goyle and that had consisted mainly of his words and instructions. But then, when had these two ever had something to say? They had abandoned him as soon as his family fell into disgrace and they realized that they did not need him to do fine by their own. It was very simple indeed: go around, torture your classmates, and you would pass your studies with flying colours. It was just Crabbe and Goyle's cup of tea. Draco had been shocked to find out that it was not his.

He did not miss them. He missed his authority over them, yes, and he missed being in charge, but he did not miss _them_.

Instead, he has started hanging out with Daphne. Many people even thought them a couple, which was stupid, of course: Daphne was a pretty girl and so on, but she was not his type. Well, he was not sure what his type was, but being close to an attractive and intelligent girl had at least opened his eyes for the fact that Pansy Parkinson was not his type, either. She was silly, obsessive, and had a cruel streak that had once appealed to him, but now only disgusted him. He did not want to wake up one day only to realize that he had married an the doppelganger of Alecto Carrow, thank you very much. Assuming that there would be one dayu, of course, which, at this stage of war, did not look like a sure thing.

Pansy, on the other hand, seemed to fully believe the rumours and had once inflicted a quarrel with Daphne, who had, surprisingly, made her turn her tail. For all these seven years, Draco had never known that the quiet, unobtrusive Daphne had it in her.

It had begun after he had saved her sister from Amicus Carrow. Not that he had received any word of thanks from Astoria – if anything, her hatred for his had only grown stronger. She seemed to consider him an incarnation of the Satan himself, almost as bad as the Dark Lord. She avoided him, made snide comments and so on. Daphne, on the other hand, had tentatively started something like friendship with him and he soon discovered that he enjoyed it a lot.

He now knew how much he had missed by not even trying to get to know her seven years ago. She was not only someone he could have a real conversation – truly, only about impersonal matters, but a two-sided conversation anyway, - but she might have saved him a good deal of boredom during all the summer parties that his parents had dragged him onto. She had been on most of them, but the idea of talking to her had never crossed his mind. And Daphne was reserved by nature, so she had not come to talk to him either. And he had stood there, having dull conversations, impressing the right people, drinking horrible tea – he hated tea, but how could he say that? One couldn't _not_ drink tea on such parties – and wishing for it to be over soon. But now Daphne amused him with stories about things that had happened to these same parties, and he could not understand where he had been when all this stuff had been taking place.

Daphne talked about freshly graduated pureblood daughters with turned-up noses, all dying to be married properly – to him, preferably. As a 'proof' she pointed the way the hostess' daughter had blushed when handing him the cup, or how she had said that she _hated_ dark hair and so on. Daphne told him about who had been trying to impress whom and how stupid he had looked, while doing it, or how once there hadn't been enough caviar and the lady of the house had postponed the dinner for two hours, preferring being proclaimed an abominable hostess to not having enough money.

They both knew what they were doing, of course. They were trying to pretend that everything was normal, that the war was not happening.

It didn't work.

"Have you started your Potions essay?" Draco asked.

"I have it done."

He looked at her, astounded. "Merlin, Greengrass," he said, "are you trying to beat Granger, or what?"

For a moment, he was afraid that he had gone too far. But the girl only smiled. "It would be quite difficult," she said. "You know she's considered the smartest witch of her age."

He shook his head. "Whatever she could do, you could do it, too." He was sure of that. "You just didn't want to." He knew that she had received Outstanding in all her OWLs, except for one Exceeding Expectations. But somehow, she had never tried too hard in her everyday studies and she had hardly received brilliant results. This year was different, though – she had concentrated in her schoolwork and the result was more than obvious.

For a moment, she stared at him. "No, I didn't want to," she confessed. "If I thought it mattered, I would have tried as hard as I could. But these things come to her more naturally than they do to me. Why should I lose my time and efforts in a competition that doesn't _mean_ anything?"

Draco almost laughed incredulously. He himself had been competing with the bushy-haired Mudblood ever since they set their foot at Hogwarts. "Why on earth are you in Slytherin?" he asked.

She didn't answer.

He looked around again.

"She's in the library," Daphne said. wearily. "She had some studying to do."

"I wasn't looking for her."

"If you say so." Her voice turned suddenly cold. "Guys like you don't deserve girls like Astoria."

He gaped at her, taken aback at the change. And why, oh why did she speak as if it _mattered_ whether he deserved Astoria or not? The bloody girl hated his guts! "Listen, Greengrass, if you think you can – " he started angrily.

She stood up. "I'm going to sleep. Good night to you, Malfoy." Her voice was all pleasant. He was so surprised that he could not finish his angry retort.

He slumped back against the cushion of the sofa. His back felt like a rope of pain strings and he decided to enjoy the now empty common room instead of being forced to bear with the disrespectful presence of his dormmates. He rolled up his sleeves, so his burning skin would be exposed to cooler air, and closed his eyes, trying to chase away the thoughts coming to his mind – all insistent and highly unpleasant.

"What happened?"

He woke up with a start. Astoria Greengrass was standing in front of him, clutching a bunch of books under her arm. Her face was pale and her horrified eyes seemed glue to the red-brown-yellow-with-purple edges burns on the skin of his hands. He hurriedly reached to pull his sleeves back. "Nothing."

"You must go to the infirmary!"

He raised his brows. "Such a care, I'm moved to tears," he drawled.

"I'm serious. You really should - "

"There is no need and anyway, I wouldn't go even if there was."

No one should see the wounds that the Dark Lord's fury had inflicted on him. _Well, it's a bit late for that now, isn't it?_

Astoria left her books on the nearest table, drew her wand out, pointed it at his left arm and whispered a word. It sounded a lot like '_Aguamenti'_, but that was not it. Immediately, he felt relief. She did the same to his other arm. "That must keep them moist till tomorrow afternoon," she said, put her wand back in her pocket, collected her books and went on her way.

"Wait!" he cried.

Astoria turned back. "Why?" he asked.

Her jaw clenched, and she said, "I always pay my debts. It was because of that broom closet and the lie that you told Carrows."

She left, leaving Draco astounded. _Will the Greengrass sister ever cease to amaze me?_

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**Pleased? Disappointed? I hope you're going to tell me!**


	4. Chapter 4

_Disclaimer: I am not Jo, I am me. _

**Thanks for all your wonderful reviews. I hope you can forgive me for not updating for so long. **

Chapter 4

_A few months later…_

It was nice warm afternoon, but even that could not chase the cold out of his heart. It was always there, ever since that night when Harry Potter had killed the Dark… _Voldemort_, Draco reminded himself. _I must remember to call him Voldemort_. It was harder than he had previously thought, but in fact, he shouldn't have expected it to be easy – his whole life had been full of reverie for the Dark Lord – Tom, as Harry Potter called him – and his iminaginable power and abilities in magic. Well, at least that was not exaggerated – the D… Voldemort had possessed power that Draco had never seen in anyone else and hoped that he would never see again. Unfortunately, almost everything else his parents had told him had turned out to be a lie. All in all, a great disappointment.

_I won't think of him. I lost my whole life so far in awe of him; I won't lose the second one thinking of him._

Easier said than done.

He wanted to sit in Florian Fortesque's and eat an ice cream and wondered whether this small pleasure would be worth all resentful glances that he would get out of virtually everyone who saw him. The Malfoy family was in no one's good graces right now. Who am I kidding? _We'll never be in anyone's good graces, ever again_. He thought about the way things had been only two years earlier, when so many pureblooded families had been scrambling to get into _their_ good graces. How things changed. It was _humiliating_.

Anyway, it turned out that his debate over entering Fortescue's or not was in vain, since the Golden Trio – Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger – popped out of nowhere and went to have their ice cream and there was no way in hell that he would sit down in a radius of two miles from where they sat. Three, preferably.

They had a little bundle with them. It was so wrapped in white cloth that it looked like a luggage, but the shape of it was human and when it turned from side to side, it revealed brilliant blue hair and a wide smile.

Draco stood where he was, at the corner, and watched them. Since Harry Potter had helped his family escape legal punishment – since he had been _charitable_ towards them, a thought that still left Draco with sour taste in his mouth, - he had never seen them face to face, but he had seen them from afar and had taken some grim delight in their obvious misery – at least he wasn't the only one suffering!

But now the bright summer had obviously went into their bones. They smiled and chatted, Weasley and Granger kissed over the little Metamorphmagus' head and Potter looked away, embarrassed, and used the moment to feed the baby a spoon of his own ice-cream… and Granger sharply turned her head towards him and snapped something. Potter looked at her guiltily. _How she saw what he was doing_, Draco wondered. _They were behind her_. Probably Granger had developed a sixth sense where the child and these two idiots of hers were included… they would probably kill him with their wise ideas, if she weren't watching.

They looked so disgustingly happy, it was sickening. Draco thought about the grim grandeur of Malfoy's manor, his father's dark silence and his mother, never crying, but each morning looking bloated with past weeping, the silent movements of the house elves. The mix of pity, love and yes, resentment that he felt for his parents. If anything, they all had turned into pariahs in the wizard society. Not that they didn't deserve it, but damn it, he hated every minute of it!

Sometimes, he wondered if living without fear was worth it.

And now the obvious happiness of the Golden Trio felt like a physical blow for him. Everyone in this bloody world seemed to be delirious with happiness. Everyone but Draco Malfoy.

"Hello."

At first, he didn't bother to look, because the girl, whoever she was, could not be talking to him. No one did. But then she came closer and stood behind him, and he blinked.

She wore a bright yellow robe that resembled somewhat a Muggle dress. The slight wind blew it a little and under the sunrays, she looked like a sunray herself – like a bright yellow flower. Her smile was brilliant – he had never seen her smiling like this.

_The most beautiful girl in the world smiled at me_, he found himself thinking.

"Hello," Astoria repeated, ever so joyfully.

"Hi." His own voice was significantly cooler.

"How are you?"

"I am fine," he lied. It was a lie, of course, for he was all but fine. Yet, damn it, if he let her see that. He still had his pride, after all, and she wasn't a friend. Since she had healed his arms, they had never talked again and she had resumed her former hostile altitude, which made the current change even more confusing: today, Astoria was all friendliness and smiles.

"Would you for a coffee?" she asked. "Or maybe an ice-cream?"

He wanted to snap at her, to tell her that she should stop playing games and pretend that she had forgotten her former hostile ways. He even opened his mouth to say so, but he found out that he couldn't. For first time since the Dark Lord… Voldemort's fall… someone was talking to him, asking how he was, wanting _to be_ with him. He couldn't say no, even if they were Astoria Greengrass – the girl who he understood less of all and didn't like at all.

"I'd like to," he said and added, "Just not here."

She looked at Florian Fortescue's, saw the three celebrities there – Weasley's hair made him immediately stand out and the fluff on the kid's head had taken the same colour, repulsive! – and the photographers that were already gathering around them – and nodded. "Of course not."

They walked down the street, Astoria chatting away about anything – her holiday, the last bits of gossip, Daphne's new boyfriend and so on. She was acting like an old friend so convincingly that at one moment, the astounded Draco started asking himself whether all her hostility had not been a figment of his own imagination.

They drew a few glances, of course, all grim and baleful. They were all directed at Draco, but Astoria got her fair share just for being with him. Surprisinly, Draco felt annoyed on her behalf. She, however, didn't seem to mind.

She had never been so vibrant – not since he had started noticing her. He had no doubts about the reason. Living without fear really agreed with some people. He found himself really smiling at her over his ice-cream, happy just to be with someone.

Astoria suddenly ducked under the table and when she straightened again, Draco saw the small thing in her arms – a kitten, quite young, spotted, his front paw severely injured. It certainly had fleas, but that didn't seem to bother Astoria, who drew her wand out, before she remembered that she had no right to do magic out of school yet.

"Give me yours."

He looked blank. "Give you what?"

"Your wand," she said impatiently, "so the spell won't be traced back to me."

_She must be joking_. "You want my wand to use on a _cat_? A street cat?"

"Yes," she confirmed, "that's exactly what I want."

Stunned, he gave it to her anyway and saw how the new wand that he had never felt the desire to try out, did its first magic. Removing the fleas from a street cat's fur. If Narcissa Malfoy had seen it, he'd have never heard the end of it.

"You don't really intend to take him in, do you?" Draco asked.

"Why, yes. I have always felt empathy for creatures that need care and attention and he certainly qualifies here. He isn't the first cat I take home and treat."

"And you keep all of them?" He couldn't believe it. Her parents should have drawn a line somewhere.

"No." She grinned. "Not since I was ten. Then, my father decided to make an account for all the poor creatures that I had taken in. He almost fainted, when he found out that he was paying for the food of twelve cats, four dogs, and two pigeons."

Draco could fully sympathize with the man. Having all these animals, in addition to a daughter who was obviously insane could drive everyone mad.

"So, now it's limited to only two at a time. But I think I can pass that one out as a birthday present."

And so they sat – the blond ex-Death Eater, the dark-haired unusual Slytherin, and the kitten. The day suddenly looked brighter, and the sun warmed his skin more intensively. The sky was blue and clear, and Astoria was smiling.

He almost thought that living without fear would be worth it.

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**So? Am I forgiven?**

5


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